Between 1735 and 1748, hundreds of young men and their families emigrated from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia coast to settle and protect the new British colony. The trustees of the colony and military governor James Oglethorpe wanted settlers who were accustomed to hardship, militant in nature, and willing to become frontier farmer-soldiers. In this respect, the Highlanders fit the bill perfectly through training and tradition. In this book, Anthony W. Parker explains what factors motivated the Highlanders to leave their native glens of Scotland for the pine barrens of Georgia. He considers how their cultural distinctiveness and
old world
experience prepared the Scots to play a vital role in the survival of Georgia in this early and precarious moment in its history.